Thursday, March 17, 2011

More Reasons to Go Into the Vending Business

From 2000-2010, specialization of vending machines became more and more common and have caused vending machine sales to zoom. Vending extended increasingly into non-traditional areas like electronics. Some examples of these are the Best Buy Express ZoomShops that have become common in many airports and malls, and Coinstar change sorting machines located in grocery stores. Machines of this new category are generally called Automated Retail kiosks. The trend of specialization and proliferation of vending machines is perhaps most apparent in places where vending machines sell products from toilet paper to hot meals and pornography. In fact there is an estimated one vending machine per 23 people in Japan. Containers of live bait are frequently sold in vending machines in the rural United States.

Even vending machine service is a lucrative business owing to the proliferation of the vending business. A full-line vending company may set up several types of vending machines that sell a wide range of products. The types of products which vending machine sales include could range from candy, cookies, chips, fresh fruit, milk, cold food, coffee, bottles, cans of soda, and even frozen products like ice cream. These products can be sold from various types of vending machines that include coffee, snack, cold food, 20-oz. bottle machines, and glass-front bottle machines.

Vending machine sales could be of candy too. Bulk candy machines are entirely mechanical machines that vend a handful of candy, a bouncy ball, or perhaps a capsule with a small toy or jewelry, for one or two coins. The items may be unsorted; in that case what the customer exactly gets is subject to chance. In other instances, the customer is guaranteed a specific type of candy. The gross margins in the bulk candy business can be quite high — gumballs, for instance, can be purchased in bulk for 2 cents apiece and sold for 25 cents in the US. Gumballs and candy have a relatively long shelf life, enabling vending machine operators to manage many machines without too much time or cost involved. In addition, the machines are typically inexpensive compared to soft drink or snack machines, which often require power and sometimes refrigeration to work – and require less vending machine service .

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